GoKawiilMedieval 'deodand' law once fined object owners for accidental deaths
An 1829 collapse at the Norfolk Arms Hotel killed 30 people when a crowded floor gave way, and a coroner's jury applied the centuries-old English legal doctrine of deodand, valuing the broken timbers at just five shillings to be split among victims' families. Deodand law held that any moveable object directly causing a person's death was forfeited to the Crown as an 'accursed thing,' a concept rooted in the idea that objects tied to death carried a kind of divine taint. The practice persisted in English courts until it was abolished in 1846, even as it clashed with the realities of industrializing Britain.